FLASHBACK: Nadler Was Repeatedly ‘Trumped’ by DJT in 1990’s Real-Estate Feud
Shane Trejo
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Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) is on the war path against President Trump, abusing his authority at the helm of the House Judiciary Committee to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt for following the law, and claiming a non-existent “constitutional crisis” is occurring within the Trump administration.
“We’ve talked for a long time about approaching a constitutional crisis. We are now in it,” Nadler said to reporters on Wednesday.
While Nadler likes to advertise himself as a steward of the public trust, his motivations to take Trump down may be far more self-serving than he is willing to admit considering their long-running feud going back to the 1990s.
In 1995, the New York Times reported that Rep. Nadler passed legislation helping Trump expand his real estate empire in Manhattan, unbeknownst to the clueless lawmaker:
A Congressman who opposes his Riverside South proposal, Representative Jerrold Nadler of the West Side, threw a Federal wrench right into the plan’s soft middle this week. So Mr. Trump says he is thrilled, contending that it will now be easier and cheaper to develop the project.
“Jerry Nadler fell right into my trap,” the adaptable builder said yesterday in an interview…
The plan was that if the highway was moved, Mr. Trump could build a waterfront park above it with direct access to the water, adjacent to his buildings. In return, the civic groups dropped their opposition to Riverside South, withdrew a potentially damaging lawsuit and made a pact to work with the often bedeviling Mr. Trump.
From the beginning, though, there was this problem: the stretch of the West Side Highway between 57th and 72d streets was so deteriorated that state and city authorities said it needed immediate repair. It had a $72 million federally financed renovation, completed in December. That, in turn, raised a question of whether government would deliberately tear down a newly revamped roadway and spend another pot of Federal money to move it a few yards away. Assuming the money was forthcoming…
Mr. Trump says he knew all along that the highway was staying right where it is, which, if true, means that he neutralized opposition to his plan four years ago by making a promise that he figured he would not have to keep…
At the same time, though, even as he expressed his great gratitude to Mr. Nadler, Mr. Trump could not contain his anger toward the Congressman, saying Mr. Nadler was “doing this for publicity” and accusing him of peddling “total nonsense.” Why the disaffection if Mr. Nadler did him such a favor? “Because it’s better for me, but it’s worse for the civics and the city,” Mr. Trump said.
“You know, this is an opportunity to get something done in New York,” he added, noting that the city’s fondness for turning developments that should take a few years to carry out into developments that span decades.
The feud only worsened from there, as Nadler grew more angry after being publicly bamboozled by Trump. Little did he know that getting outfoxed by Trump would come to define his entire career in public office.
Three years later, the President made a fool of Nadler yet again as Nadler was forced to vote ‘yes’ on legislation that would personally enrich Trump. The Observer reported in 1998:
Representative Jerrold Nadler may or may not have snarled his archenemy’s surname as he snapped his cell phone shut on May 22, but he certainly had good cause to toss a few choice epithets in the developer’s direction. Minutes later, the House of Representatives would vote on a $200-billion Federal transportation bill, and the Democratic Congressman for the Upper West Side had been preparing to cast a “Yea” when a frantic aide called with a disconcerting piece of news.
The aide was skimming through the voluminous bill’s fine print when he made a startling discovery. In the latest twist to a bitter and intensely personal feud between Mr. Nadler and Donald Trump, the developer and his allies had somehow smuggled into the bill $6 million in Federal funds for a key element of the Trump Place project, or the Mega-Development Formerly Known as Riverside South…
Mr. Trump and his supporters had won a substantial chunk of Federal change toward the mega-development-all without the knowledge of Mr. Nadler, whose district will be radically transformed by the mammoth project.
“Trump got $6 million in the dead of night when no one knew anything about it,” an enraged Mr. Nadler told The Observer . “The final agreement was reached at 3 in the morning.”
(Mr. Trump may have scored more than $6 million: According to supporters, the bill allots an additional $15 million toward future design costs; Mr. Nadler was uncertain of the total.)
Characteristically, Mr. Trump downplayed his victory. “There were so many people on our side, beyond Donald Trump, that it wasn’t really very hard,” Mr. Trump said. “The chips all seemed to fall right.”
Nadler, by grossly overreaching as House Judiciary Committee Chairman to keep the Russia collusion hoax going a little while longer, is yet again falling into another one of Trump’s traps.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1113047970251931648
The belligerent leftist Congressman will be lucky to leave his privileged federal position with a single shred of dignity by the time President Trump is done with him.
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